Twitter Abruptly Bans Links To Selected Social Platforms

Twitter users can no longer promote their presence on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, and Post, among other social media platforms. Twitter says it will take action against users who break this policy “at both the Tweet level and the account level” in a post discussing the changes.

As a result, users can no longer be able to link their profiles to other social platforms via Twitter bios or post messages encouraging followers to visit their Facebook or Instagram pages. The restriction extends beyond just sharing links from competing platforms; it also prohibits providing usernames or handles from those networks without URLs.

A tweet from Elon Musk appears to go against Twitter’s support website, which claims that users can no longer tweet out anything from blocked platforms unless it is cross-posted to both platforms. He says, “Casually posting a few links here and there is ok, but no more relentless free advertising of competitors.”

In addition, users will no longer be able to link to external link aggregators like Linktree or Lnk.Bio, and Twitter may suspend accounts “used for the sole purpose of promoting material on another social platform.” Although this feature doesn’t appear to be available yet, Twitter is still okay with the paid promotion of these banned platforms.

According to the company, “we recognize that certain social media platforms provide alternative experiences to Twitter, and allow users to post content to Twitter from these platforms. In general, any type of cross-posting to our platform is not in violation of this policy, even from the prohibited sites listed above. Additionally, we allow paid advertisement/promotion for any of the prohibited social media platforms.”

According to Twitter, any tweets that break the rules will be removed, and the company may also temporarily suspend individuals whose profiles contain links to prohibited social media sites. Additionally, it will take action against users who attempt to circumvent this policy by hiding links to other platforms, writing out “dot” in place of “. ” in the names of social media sites to avoid URL generation or uploading screenshots of your handle on a restricted social networking platform.

For the time being, the Twitter ban does not apply to other sites like Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, Weibo, and OnlyFans, and it is unclear why some platforms are specifically excluded from the ban while others are not. Musk writes “Twitter should be easy to use, but no more relentless free advertising of competitors, no traditional publisher allows this and neither will Twitter.”

Links to Twitter rival Mastodon are already blocked by Twitter at the platform level. An error message that reads: “We can’t finish this request because this link has been recognized by Twitter or our partners as being potentially hazardous” appears when attempting to tweet a link to one of the Mastodon servers or the website itself. Although it’s unclear at this point whether Twitter will ever disable links from the blocked platforms in a similar way, it appears users can still publish links to them as of this writing.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded “why” to Twitter Support’s post concerning the new rule. Recently, Dorsey contributed about $245,000 to Nostr, a decentralized social network covered by Twitter’s prohibition. Since Dorsey now lists his Nostr username in his Twitter bio and claims that Twitter’s ban on the network “doesn’t make sense,” he may be subject to suspension. Twitter for is yet t respond to questions regarding its new regulations.

All of this comes after a chaotic week for Twitter that saw a number of journalists suspended after they tweeted about @ElonJet, a now-banned Twitter account that tracked the location of the billionaire’s private jet. These journalists included CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan and Ryan Mac from The New York Times. According to Musk, the journalists “doxxed” his whereabouts, and as a result, Twitter implemented a rule banning “live location information” and “links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes.” Musk momentarily suspended Taylor Lorenz of The Washington Post for “previous doxxing action” before subsequently restoring most of the blocked accounts after asking users if Twitter should restore their suspensions.